One gamer's journey through the wide world of games and gaming culture.

I usually don’t jump all over Ghostcrawler at the slightest provocation. (Though it does sound like fun) But for once I’m going to weigh in on what I feel is the obvious disconnect the developers seem to have. (I’m not judgmental…no not at all. Ghosty seems to indicate Wild Growth needs its cooldown increased. I really want to talk about this because the problems with Wild Growth and Circle of Healing spamming have been here since BC. I remember being on Pookie and hearing healers complain vocally about priests CoH spamming and it being a sign of a poor healer. Since those days, those halcyon days in Karazan the spamming of these spells has been a badge of shame for any healer. To combat this kneejerk spamming Blizzard introduced a cooldown, currently at 6seconds.

I can sympathize with Wyldway, deeply in fact given the semi recent change making a freaking 12 second cooldown (which I still maintain was simply justification for the AWFUL original 4pT10 bonus which would proc a reset to the Penance cooldown. The awful bonus has been replaced with something better but the cooldown remains.) But I have to agree with past obersvations that Ghosty gives absolutely crap explanations as to why developers make their decisions. (The least of which being that even Elitests Jerks has proven their math is flawed in the past…don’t get me started on that rant it won’t stop)

Looking at the current raid content is there less raid damage going out, thus making Wild Growth or Circle of Healing a bad choice? No actually there is raid damage going on in every single boss encounter in Icecrown Citadel. Hmm if you lead a horse to water in the middle of the desert it is going to drink. Raid damage = fast heals on the max number of people you can get. It is just common sense to see these spells seeing heavy rotation.

Raising the cooldown on spells like Wild Growth and Circle of Healing are good things for healers. It’s one of the few* things that will buy you GCDs to actually cast other spells.

But are they good things for the raid? Is having to cast 3 nourishes or flash heals (depending of course) better than the potential to heal 6 people given that 6+ people are taking damage? In our current raid environment it is usually more than 6 people getting hit and needing those heals.

I really feel like the developer team is disconnected from raiders and what is really going on in raid environments. Seriously, you have fights with raid damage and are surprised/upset people are using these spells? The logic is just missing for me. I am sure he will pull out the magical “Well what we are seeing behind the magic curtain” spiel. I think I am way too jaded to believe dev team has their finger on the pulse anymore. Secretly I think they don’t like the way it works in PvP and want it changed. But I admit to my anti PvP bias and being tired of hearing abilities are being changed because of PvP.